Google Now Reviews All Android App Submissions To Quickly Identify Policy Violations
Google has taken heat over malicious apps in Google Play that feign innocent intentions but are really up to no good. To Google's credit, it removes such apps once it's aware of them, though that's a reactionary solution to the problem. Moving forward, Google will review all apps and updates before making them available in Google Play.
This is a human-driven effort involving a team of experts, Google says. Their job is to look for any and all violations of Google's developer policies, and to root them out earlier in the app lifecycle. According to Google, the process is swift and won't unnecessarily delay an app's release. Think hours, as opposed to weeks for Apple's review process.
"We value the rapid innovation and iteration that is unique to Google Play, and will continue to help developers get their products to market within a matter of hours after submission, rather than days or weeks. In fact, there has been no noticeable change for developers during the rollout," Google said.
This is something Google claims to have been doing for the past several months. It will take some time to see how successful they are in preventing new malicious apps from entering Google Play. In the meantime, the company continues to root out existing apps that are laced with malware, including the removal last month of several popular apps that infected millions of Android users with adware.
The other thing Google will have to be careful with here is not overstepping its bounds and blocking apps that it simply disapproves of, and instead keep the focus on malicious, broken, and/or misleading apps.
This is a human-driven effort involving a team of experts, Google says. Their job is to look for any and all violations of Google's developer policies, and to root them out earlier in the app lifecycle. According to Google, the process is swift and won't unnecessarily delay an app's release. Think hours, as opposed to weeks for Apple's review process.
"We value the rapid innovation and iteration that is unique to Google Play, and will continue to help developers get their products to market within a matter of hours after submission, rather than days or weeks. In fact, there has been no noticeable change for developers during the rollout," Google said.
This is something Google claims to have been doing for the past several months. It will take some time to see how successful they are in preventing new malicious apps from entering Google Play. In the meantime, the company continues to root out existing apps that are laced with malware, including the removal last month of several popular apps that infected millions of Android users with adware.
The other thing Google will have to be careful with here is not overstepping its bounds and blocking apps that it simply disapproves of, and instead keep the focus on malicious, broken, and/or misleading apps.
